At The Gods of the Copybook Headings, Richard Anderson looks at the problem Quebec has with entrepreneurial and capitalist tendencies:
The hatred of capitalism in the “Quebec Dark Ages” had little to do with Anglo economic dominance. That most quintessential of Canadian capitalist icons, the coureur de bois, was a black marketer who flouted the authority of the colonial government and the sanctioned merchant class. Official French society, on both sides of the Atlantic, has always despised businessmen, except for those rent seekers who paid homage to the powers that be. In New France these licensed traders were known as voyageurs.
This is a never resolved tension in Quebecois society, between the pure entrepreneur represented by the coureur de bois and the official capitalist represented by the voyageur. There has been no shortage in modern economic history of talented Quebecois entrepreneurs, but their efforts are widely regarded as being some how suspicious. There is something slightly unwholesome about turning a profit and speaking French at the same time.
This is not unique to French society. In most Catholic, or post-Catholic countries this suspicion of capitalism and free markets is endemic. To their credit the French-Canadians, unlike the Portuguese, never burnt businessmen at the stake for displaying “Jewish tendencies.” It was only in some of the Protestant societies that capitalism became somewhat respectable. My own suspicion is that this had less to do with theology and more to do with social dynamics.
